


there's no-one quite like you

by huntsomeorc



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:08:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huntsomeorc/pseuds/huntsomeorc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyanna tells him all the time that he's her favourite brother. That's what makes afterwards so hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's no-one quite like you

**Author's Note:**

> Semi-canon but mostly speculation. I just really love Benjen Stark.

Lyanna tells him all the time that he’s her favourite brother, and that’s what makes afterwards so hard.

There’s so little between them, age wise, that they could almost be twins. They’re both too young to remember their mother, gone from a fever not long after Benjen was born, and their father shuts himself off after her death. Brandon is older, Ned introverted and the two of them gravitate towards one another when their brothers are fostered away.

They run rings around the unsuspecting inhabitants of Winterfell. Wherever one goes, the other isn’t far behind. Benjen is Lyanna’s partner in crime, the one who’ll take the blame when they inevitably get caught and their father sighs and wonders aloud what he’s going to do with them. He feels guilty sometimes, when he sees the resignation and the tiredness in Lord Rickard’s face, but then Lyanna will grin at him behind their father’s back and he can’t help but grin in reply. Her co-conspirator, she calls him, after she overhears Old Nan say it one day.

“I don’t know what I'd do without you, Benjen” she tells him one day when she is eight, he is seven and they’re hiding from the cook and stuffing their faces with their stolen prizes.

Those words will haunt him in the years to come.

-

She hates that she isn’t allowed to fight. Brandon outright laughs at her when he visits from Barrowtown, tells her she might be a she-wolf but there are limits. He helped her with the basics, as he did Benjen, but now Lyanna is growing he wants her to put all that aside and be a good wife-in-waiting. Ned understands to a point but he still sees her role as a lady of Winterfell, to be married and produce heirs for some other great house.

Ben doesn’t laugh or judge, just snatches two practice swords and spars with her in the godswood. She’s good; if he’s honest, she’s better than him. She’s light on her feet, quick to read her opponent’s weakness and she bests him all the time. They’re both covered in bruises, calluses developing on her hands that she says she gets from riding, and he’s positive his father doesn’t believe them. He watches Lord Rickard watching Lyanna challenge Brandon to a duel with their cutlery over dinner one night. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that was pride in his father’s eyes.

Benjen Stark sees plenty. He just chooses not to tell anyone.

-

“I don’t want to marry him,” Lyanna tells him one night after barging into his room.

He watches her pace the floor. She’s fuming. She dealt with the betrothal announcement with good grace in public but Ben saw the fury in her eyes when her father put his seal on that piece of parchment. Robert Baratheon could be a good man, Benjen does not doubt that. He’s just not the right man for his wild, glorious sister.

“Then don’t,” he says, and Lyanna snorts and flops down next to him on the bed.

“It’s my duty,” she scoffs and there’s bitterness behind every syllable. “It’s not for me, Benjen. Can you imagine me, spending my days sewing and laughing with the ladies of my household while my husband hunts and whores and drinks?”

He shakes his head.

“Brandon says I must marry. Ned says what a decent man robert is. Father says it will strengthen our house.”

She sighs.

“What do you say?” he asks, and she looks at him and smiles softly, softer than he’s ever seen her before.

“You’re the only one who’s asked me that.”

She doesn’t answer, though, and that’s why the Rhaegar business comes as a surprise to everyone but him.

-

“You are the most brilliant idiot I know,” he says as he helps her out of her armour. It’s his, technically, but she wears it though it was made to fit her.

“Did you see their faces?” she laughs, wincing as she flexes her arm. “Imagine if they knew a girl had bested them!”

“You’ll have to get rid of it,” he points out as they both look at the shield, propped against the tent wall. “Your betrothed” - he grins at her snort of disapproval - “has threatened to find you and best you. And the King is furious.”

She sighs, fingers tracing the outline of the chipped painting on the shield. “We’ll figure something out.”

“We?”

She rounds on him, that wolfish smile back on her face. “Co-conspiritors, remember?”

-

He’s awake when she slips back into the tent later that night. Brandon is off being Brandon somewhere, Ned curled into his blankets and dead to the world. She shoves him over and gets under the furs with him.

“It’s done”

“Did anyone see you?”

It’s dark but he can see that secretive smile on her face.

-

He figures it out the next morning when he sees the Prince look at his sister. The hint of warmth in his sister's polite smile, the ice of the Prince’s face cracking for a split second. He sees, and he knows what that smile meant.

“Fuck."

-

After Rhaegar has laid the crown in her lap, all hell breaks loose. Brandon stalks about, fury boiling over as he rants about arrogance and nobility and “what the hell did he think he was doing?” and Ned looks reproachfully at Lyanna while their father keeps her under guard as he prepares to take them back to winterfell.

Benjen slides next to his sister on her bed, the crown still in her fingers, a look of bemusement, amusement and a hint of fear on her face.

“I could beat him up for you, if you want”

She bursts out laughing, drawing disapproving looks from her father.

“I think Brandon has that covered.”

“Lya, ar-”

She interrupts him. “I need your help”

-

He slips out of the tent with surprising ease. That’s the good thing about being the youngest - the forgotten one, he thinks as he weaves his way to the woods. No-one ever remembers about him.

He hands the parchment to Rhaegar, searching the Prince’s face as he traces the outline of the direwolf’s head.

“Thank you,” the heir to the throne says.

Benjen musters up all of his 13-year-old courage.

“If you hurt her, I will make you pay”

Rhaegar looks down at him - he suddenly wishes he was taller and shit, why did he say that, the prince has a sword and he’s just a boy in a cloak and no armour - and he’s surprised to see a faint smile on the solemn prince’s lips.

“I don’t intend to.”

-

She sneaks into his room when they’ve been back in Winterfell for a week. He’s helped her with the ravens, kept her company in the godswood when she wanted to spar. They’ve spent a lot of time walking around Winterfell recently. He watches her run her hands over the stones, committing everything to memory, and he knows what’s coming.

“I need your help, Ben”

He knows if he asks her not to do this then she would. She would resent him for it, possibly forever, but she would stay. She is his right hand, his best friend, and he knows this is a bad idea. But it's what she wants and he has always helped her get her own way.

Instead he sighs, and says “when?”

-

 

He brings her to Rhaegar in the godswood. He's alone. He hugs her, tells her he loves her and he’s surprised and despite the gravity of the situation, amused, to hear her sniffle against his shoulder. She hates crying.

“You’re my favourite, Benjen. You’ll always be my favourite.”

It doesn’t make him feel any better as he watches her ride away.

-

His father rides south. His brother follows. Neither comes back.

Ned goes to war and Benjen stays in winterfell, his guilt keeping him company as he waits.

-

He gets a raven from her and he doesn’t know how it manages to find him straightaway, by-passing the rookery completely, but he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Is it true?”

He writes back a one word answer. He receives another parchment five days later, the last communication he has with his sister, just before Robert smashes Rhaegar on the Trident.

“I want to come home. There’s a babe. Help me, Ben.”

-

He’s standing in the godswood when he feels a chill, feels a pain low in his gut and he can hear her laughter so strongly and clearly and he knows. He knows she’s gone.

-

Ned comes home with a bundle in his arms.

He holds the child when he's alone with Ned later, and promises silently to tell him of his mother one day, of her laugh, of her prowess with a sword, of her wit, of her desire to live life as she wanted it.

“I'm going to take the black,” he tells Ned, shifting Jon in his arms.

“Why?”

He's her co-conspiritor. Co-conspiritors never tell.

-

He visits her in the crypt before he leaves. The stone mason has done a good job but you cannot capture her grin, the light in her eyes, the stubborn jut of her lip when someone told her not to do something. All those things are gone, gone forever because of him and his silence.

He touches her face, the cold likeness of the sister he had loved best of all.

“I miss you.”

It’s a long time before he can face her again.


End file.
